Kamran Abbasi

Less dangerous liaisons: a solution to corporate corruption of political choice

Power over the people: unwise NHS reform delivers unprecedented political control

The debate on prostate cancer screening is life, the universe, and everything boiled down to one question — and the answer isn’t 42. Whether or not men should be routinely screened for prostate cancer seems simple enough to answer, but only on the face of it. As two position statements from the UK’s National Screening Committee show — one on multicancer detection tests (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-089868),1 the other on surrogate outcomes (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-629407)2 — screening decisions are steeped in complexity.Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” This is advice that medical professionals and journals are well advised to heed. Certainly, the screening committee has mastered it: you may not agree with the committee’s verdicts, but you can’t fault the detailed clarity of its explanations.The clamour for screening is everywhere. If you can test for it, you should screen for it. A missed or late …

There is always something new under the sun. Last week the American Diabetes Association (ADA) shocked the world of medicine and science by ordering police to remove its journal’s editor, and others, from the society’s major annual conference (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-511576).1 Steven Kahn, editor in chief of the society’s journal Diabetes Care , had upset the ADA leadership by writing and publishing a journal editorial critical of President Trump’s damaging attack on US medical science. The ADA explained itself by saying that it was unable to allow politicisation of its event because of its charitable status. The explanation rang hollow given that it had invited members of the Trump administration to speak at the conference.If there is a time for science editors to get political—and US journals tend to be more conservative and politically silent than their UK counterparts—it is now (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-555118).2 Even the New England Journal of Medicine recently took the rare step of criticising the …

Two hundred and fifty years after liberation from British colonialism, the United States is co-hosting the football World Cup. The US might even win it for the first time—although France, its former ally against the British, seems best placed. German football manager Jürgen Klopp once called football the most important of the least important things. Cricket fans might disagree (I raise my hand here), but Klopp is setting the proper context for sport.Sadly, the US anniversary celebrations are clouded by far more troubling attempts at world domination. President Donald Trump’s aggressive strategy on pharmaceutical drug …

The startling safety data from two new reviews on maternity services might be expected to trigger immediate measures for improvement. However, the likelihood is that nothing will change quickly. The reasons for this dispiriting conclusion include the simple fact that cultural change, which seems to be at the heart of the maternity services crisis, is hard to achieve in a hurry. Another is that many other reviews and investigations in the same clinical area have failed to stop the crisis. A question for the UK’s new health secretary is: what will be different this time around?The Ockenden review is an independent inquiry into NHS maternity services in Nottingham (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-100083).1 It covers maternity care from 2012 to 2025 and involves nearly 2500 families, making it the biggest ever NHS maternity review. Five hundred mothers and babies experienced serious or avoidable harm. The deaths …

Andy Burnham is making history as the first health secretary to become prime minister of the UK. He will need that experience to rebuild trust in Labour’s stewardship of health and care. A government that set out with principled plans—many of the initial ideas aligned with recommendations from the BMJ Commission on the Future of the NHS (doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-078903)1—has lost its way and is struggling to escape a familiar policy trap: misguided short termism driven by party politics.A reason for optimism is Manchester, where Burnham was mayor. Manchester was a test bed for what the health policy expert Chris Ham calls place based care (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-100282).2 Some prominent features were devolved local government that controlled resources, collaboration across sectors, and a commitment to equity and the Marmot principles.The prosperity and economic growth that any country seeks is dependent on the health and wellbeing of its population. For example, a million young adults in the UK are unable to work because of health problems (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-037460).3 The related impact on the economy is self-evident. Economic growth itself doesn’t necessarily improve the health and wellbeing of the population—take the US, for example (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-100043)4—but the economic benefits of investing in improved health and wellbeing outcomes are clear.5One strategy is to mobilise the system to reduce waiting lists, as happened under Tony Blair—improving health, getting people back to work, and benefiting the health service more broadly. But much more …

A new report by the Health Foundation estimates that restoring population health to the level of 2014 would not only improve people’s health and wellbeing but also produce an economic benefit of £72bn (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-100335).1 In summary, the calculation is built on one fact and one assumption. The fact is that population health has deteriorated since 2014: the UK now has 15.7 million working age adults with a long term health condition, up from 11.7 million in 2014. The assumption is that reducing the number of working age adults with long term conditions unlocks economic benefits through improved economic output, additional tax revenues, and reduced welfare spending. This is only the latest in a long line of credible reports to demonstrate the economic upside of investing in health. The UK’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, should take note.There’s no reason to think that the level of …

Industry influence has undermined progress of climate actionThe heatwave that swept across Europe in June 2026 set new record temperatures for the month. France was one of the worst affected countries, with temperatures above 40°C recorded and a spike in heat related deaths.1 In England, a rare “red alert” was issued as a result of the heat, indicating a risk to life even for the healthy population.2 India, China, and the US have all been affected by extreme heat, disrupting people’s daily lives, livelihoods, and health, as well as placing emergency services and hospitals under huge strain.3At almost the same time, wildfires erupted across Canada. More than 850 conflagrations raged as of mid-July. Smoke shrouded much of eastern Canada and the US Midwest and northeast and was visible from space.4 Chicago, Detroit, and Minneapolis were among the world’s most polluted cities. Predictably, emergency room visits soared.5But if this scorching heat and hazardous air quality have felt hard to bear, the bad news is that they are a mere taste of what we can expect in the future. Global average temperatures continue to rise, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels.In November 2026, the 31st UN climate change conference (COP31) will take place in Turkey. World leaders will gather to discuss how the world can stay on track to meet the Paris Agreement and stop global average temperatures rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Current policies are projected to result in an average 2.8°C rise above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.6 It is therefore imperative that leaders agree …

Who owns our health service? Who owns our data? Who owns us? These questions are hitting us hard as a combustible mix of market forces and artificial intelligence threatens our health services, our data, and therefore our lives and livelihoods. Government thinking is that public services—and health and social care is a perfect example—are unaffordable without private and commercial enterprise. Yet this thinking may have been stretched too far.The latest example is the sale of the UK’s general practice electronic patient record system to private equity.1 Apart from private equity ownership being damaging for health (doi:10.1136/bmj-2025-086226 doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-100432),23 the change in patient record system ownership means that, along with England’s federated data platform, the US government has legal access to these data under the CLOUD Act (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-100224).4 Perhaps the lens we need to see through is the emerging one of sovereignty.The challenge of social care is one that every society faces. Some societies, notably Asian and African ones, traditionally deliver social care largely by extended families. The idea that a relative requiring support might live alone or in care is considered shameful. But those societies are changing, and the …